Taurasi Still Maradona Of Women’s Game

Diana Taurasi is a keen football fan, courtesy of her Argentinean roots

When fibaeurope.com correspondent Paul Nilsen met up with UMMC star Diana Taurasi, she found out her all-time idol had made him cry for a fortnight during the 1980's.

Yes, there's only one place to start when you sit down with anyone of Argentinian heritage and that's to talk about football and a certain Diego Armando Maradona.

Taurasi met the soccer legend at the Olympic Games in Beijing and several years later, the very mention of his name is still guaranteed to bring the broadest of approving smiles to her face.

"Oh yeah, he's still my idol and the man we all look up to in Argentina," said the guard.

"He remains our biggest icon and he's one of the greatest sports figures of all-time.

"I'm an absolute die-hard soccer fan and you'll find me following the sport as close as I would ever do with what's happening in the NBA for example.

"Those two times when Argentina won the World Cup were incredible and the last one from 1986 is especially stuck in the memory - as well as looking back on the footage from 1978 too.

"Those are very special moments for me."

By scoring a wonder goal and another via an illegal handball when he controversially punched the ball into the net to eliminate England en-route to the top of the podium, Maradona had left me distraught as an eleven-year-old.

I then explained to Taurasi how I hadn't been able to accept the now infamous handball goal, something he later described as being ‘The hand of God'.

And, whilst briefly sympathetic, she couldn't help her passion for all things Argentinian rising back to the fore.

"That first was probably the greatest goal of all-time," she said with real purpose.

"And, that goal from ‘God' was probably the second best of all-time - well at least if you ask an Argentinian," she joked, perhaps trying to erase my childhood pain with a light-hearted moment.

But what would actually mean more to Taurasi, hitting a winning shot in a Championship basketball game, or scoring the winning goal in a World Cup Final?

She declared, "I don't actually know which would be bigger to tell the truth, because the World Cup just takes on a different level of meaning altogether for me."